Early online adventure games often based on genres like fantasy or science-fiction, technically speaking, MUDs were text-based software that accepted connections from many simultaneous users. Starting in the 1970s, MUDs were the predecessors of contemporary Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs or MMOs). The era of the MUD’s emergence and prominence can be seen as an in-between time, which bridged the emergence of the commercial internet, and earlier networked systems like Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and academic internets.
Today, as social media giants compete with startups to expand and standardize digital worlds, we find ourselves in another moment of transition, with these worlds exponentially increasing in importance and usage. The history of the MUD remains central as newer virtual worlds are designed and deployed. Hardware and software transformations–through types of screens, glasses, network structures and beyond, from online marketplaces to metaverses–affect the visual and the visceral.
